If you are going to try to be the successor to "The Handmaid's Tale" I want you to bring it. "Red Clocks" a euphemism for a woman's womb or vagina (I don't know guys, I refuse to go back and read this again) talks about a different United States where abortion is once again illegal in America, in-vitro fertilization is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty, and property to every embryo. So synopsis sounded good and I went for this book. I got a somewhat incomprehensible book about four women (and one woman that one of the four is writing a biography about) that limps back and forth between them and then ends.

We have Zumas referring to the four characters as the following throughout her book: the Biographer (Ro), the Wife (Susan), the Mender (Gin) and the Daughter (Mattie).

I think Zumas wanted to designate these characters as what the world sees them at, but honestly in Gin's case the best name would have been "Witch" and Ro would have been "Spinster." So I don't know what she's doing with that. If there had only been three women in this story it would have been a nice call-back to the Maiden, Mother, and Crone.

The only story that I cared about was Mattie. One out of four is not good by the way.

Ro's story was focused on her trying to become artificially inseminated. I have no idea why the law would not have included this not being illegal if you freaking ban in-vitro fertilization, but I am not going to think too hard on it. Ro is also writing a biography on a female explorer called Eivør who lived in the 9th-century. I totally started skipping the sections in between chapters that were about her. I just could not at that point with everything else that was driving me up the wall about this book.

Susan is not happy in her marriage and seems to dislike one of her two kids. She wants her husband to go to counseling and he refuses, so she is in a bad stalemate in her marriage. This also led me to question if you are even allowed to divorce in this bold new world, but I guess so. She seems to be passive aggressive about everything and I just honestly wanted to yell at her to either leave your husband or suck it up.

Mattie is adopted and is pretty much the perfect daughter. When she finds herself pregnant, she's scared about what options are left to her. She does confide in Ro so there are some scenes between them, but that is way towards the end.

Gin leaves in the woods and women come to see her now for ailments. So that part was kind of interesting. If the U.S. reverses itself, would more mid-wives or others have to step forward to be there to deal with things for women again. But here story was all over the place for me.

The writing was tough to get past. The flow was awful. It would have helped if all of the women interacted, but they don't. Ro interacts with Susan and Mattie. Mattie interacts with Gin and Ro. The four of them I don't think have one scene together in this book.

The world building didn't really work for me since it left me with a ton of questions. Do I think in the United States we are coming ever closer to a woman's right to choose being restricted, yes. That scares me a lot. We know that somehow this act just randomly got passed. The Supreme Court said okay to this? Where were the mass protests? How the heck did in-vitro even get included with this?

Also the book goes into how single people would soon not be allowed to adopt because of a two parent requirement which also seems to be slamming those who are LGBT so that left me with wondering if that is illegal too?

But then later on Ro brings up protests happening that she is thinking about being a part of and I just wondered about what did the rest of the world say, what are others doing? We hear how one teen goes to jail or disappears essentially after being found out she had an abortion.